| A Passion for Purity |
Pastor Steve Holt
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Mountain Springs Church
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| 07/01/2007 |
A Passion for Purity
Nehemiah 13
Vs. 1-3
- This was probably happening when the people were making their covenant in the last chapter.
- This is actually what the Bible reference says:
Deuteronomy 23:3-5
“An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter the assembly of the LORD; even to the tenth generation none of his descendants shall enter the assembly of the LORD forever, 4 because they did not meet you with bread and water on the road when you came out of Egypt, and because they hired against you Balaam the son of Beor from Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse you. 5 Nevertheless the LORD your God would not listen to Balaam, but the LORD your God turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the LORD your God loves you.”
- Ammon and Moab were the children of Lot through incest with his daughters.
- If you recall, this was just after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
- Lot and his daughters escape, Lot gets drunk, and they have relations with him in a cave.
- From that point on there is great enmity between Israel and the descendants of Ammon and Moab…whose descendants are known as the Ammonites and Moabites.
- This story being referred to comes to us from Numbers 22-24 in which the king of the Moabites, Balak, hires out the prophet Balaam to curse the Jews, but every time Balaam tries to curse the Jews, God gives him a word of blessing!
- Four times God actually uses Balaam to bring a blessing instead of a curse to the Jews.
- This is very frustrating to Balak and the Moabites.
- Ex. Be careful in cursing or criticizing certain churches or groups, especially if God’s blessing is upon them! You might be cursing God in the process.
Vs. 4-5
- Eliashib, a priest, is allowing an Ammonite to take over one of the rooms of the Temple to allow this guy to have a condo in the Temple.
- Remember Tobiah? His heart was never with Nehemiah and he took opportunity.
- This is the guy in chapter 6 who was sending letters to key relatives in order to counter Nehemiah’s discernment of him.
- If you recall, Nehemiah doesn’t do anything about his maneuverings, he is waiting for God’s timing.
- Ex. My philosophy is that you give people a lot of freedom…and just enough rope for them to either build a ladder or hang themselves with it…God has His timing.
Vs. 6-7
- The word “discovered” might also be translated as “I discerned,”
- Now is the time for Nehemiah to move in…he has discerned that the gig is up.
- Ex. There is a little bit of Tobiah in all of us! Those little compromises in those rooms of our lives.
- God wants to fill the rooms of our life with the grain and frankincense of God, and yet we have filled up our lives with busyness, compromises, and stuff.
- We can have such cluttered lives that we can’t hear from God. The room that should be used for God’s glory, full of treasures from God, we have cluttered up with our busy and sinful stuff.
Vs. 8-9
- This is the not the cautious and weeping Nehemiah of 12 years before!
- Nehemiah is not messing around, no discussion, no compromise!
- There is underwear and stuff flying out the door! Nehemiah cleanses the place…it probably stunk.
- There are times when the church needs decisive leadership against sin and rebellion…this is one of those situations.
- Ex. How about you? Are there areas of your life that the Holy Spirit is pointing out as needing to be cleansed?
Vs. 10
- I “realized”… again we see the leadership discernment of Nehemiah.
- Back in chapter 10 they had promised that they would provide for the Levites and the singers, and during these years they have ditched their covenant.
- Someone once said, “The world is paved with good intentions.” The Jews had started with great intentions, but their actions show their lack of commitment.
Vs. 11
- “contended” has the meaning of “with a loud voice.” Nehemiah is really upset!
- He is speaking to the rulers, who should have known better.
- He is asking, “Why have you done this?”
Vs. 12-13
- So Nehemiah is able to mobilize the whole nation back into obedience.
- He finds the right people for the right job at the right time.
Vs. 14
- Four times in this chapter we see Nehemiah crying out in prayer to God for wisdom and discernment.
- Remember that Nehemiah has given 12 years of his life to the rebuilding of the wall and the revival of the nation of Israel.
- He is probably really mad because of his fear of God and his love for God’s work.
- He had fasted, prayed, and worked so hard!
Vs. 15-18
- They swore in their covenant with God that they would honor the Sabbath!
- “Remember that you were made prisoners and sold into slavery because you did not keep the Sabbath!”
- For 490 years they neglected the Sabbath year (every 7 years) and thus God was exacting a tribute for their disobedience. So for 70 years God had taken them into captivity.
- Folks, God measures time morally! He will not contend with your sin forever!
- “profaning the Sabbath” – profane comes from the word, “profanum”, Latin, meaning “outside the temple, outside the things of God, the common.”
- We are to honor the Lord’s day, it is holy to the Lord, we are not to “forsake the assembling together.”
Vs. 19
- This was sundown on Friday until sundown on Saturday.
- Even today, sundown begins when there are 3 stars in the sky…that’s when the Sabbath day begins…and when it is dark enough to see 3 stars on Saturday night, then the Sabbath is over.
- That comes from Genesis 1:5 where it says, “So the evening and the morning were the first day.”
- Nehemiah had them lock the doors of the gates at this time.
Vs. 20-21
- He is not going to ordain them!! I like the spirit of this guy.
- In other words, these foreigners keep hanging out for two weeks waiting on the Sabbath to do their trade, and Nehemiah gives them that amount of time to leave and get the message. They don’t and now he’s warning them.
- They know the reputation of Nehemiah and they scatter quickly!
- Ex. There is a time for the laying on of hands this way! Grace has run out! Not God’s grace but a church’s grace.
- One of my responsibilities as a shepherd is to equip and breed healthy sheep through God’s Word. Another responsibility is “thy rod and thy staff” and that is to fight off wolves, including “wolves in sheep’s clothing.”
Vs. 22-24
- The Law forbid this…they had covenanted not to do this…they had sworn not to do this.
- They are marrying Philistines, Ammorites, and Moabites.
- When there is spiritual compromise, you will have moral and relational compromise.
- Ex. Every week we have people who get saved, and they are married now to an unbeliever… and they stay with them and live the life before them.
- Ex. If you are single and you are dating non-believers you will get yourself into a real mess.
- The Jews are compromising spiritually, leading to domestic compromise.
Vs. 25-27
- We are living in the New Testament and there are no racial or ethnic lines drawn…no prohibition in the New Testament.
- But there are spiritual lines drawn: saved and lost; heaven and hell.
- God is looking for a godly seed!! God forbids a Christian to marry a non-Christian.
- The fruit of the womb is His reward…we are stewards of His fruit.
- No, you’re not going there.
- No, you’re not watching that.
- No, you’re not hanging out with that crowd.
- I don’t care if “everyone is doing it”…everyone ain’t going to heaven!
- And everybody is not going to stand before God and be asked “What did you do?” I will!
- If you have a marriage where one is saved and the other is not, you don’t have to encourage the carnal nature.
- But your kids will gravitate toward the unsaved, because it feeds their natural carnal nature.
- But as you serve Him, remaining serious about Jesus, even then the kids will move toward the non-Christian.
- No one has to tell their kids to go toward sin…that will be natural.
- So, you still need to encourage the godly, spiritual side and the children of those unions need to learn the language of heaven.
- They don’t need to learn the language of the Ammonites or Moabites!
- God wants a “godly seed” for His heritage…Liz and I will give an account to God.
- Vs. 25, when you need counseling…you probably don’t want to go to Pastor Nehemiah; sessions with Nehemiah included:
- Ripping out their hair!
- Smacking them around!
- He refers to Solomon because even Solomon:
- the wisest man in the world, who loved God,
- one of the greatest kings of the world,
- even he had his life ruined by adultery and spiritually foreign women,
- because they took the heart.
- There are many warnings in scripture toward men about women…there are no warnings toward women about men…you ladies are much smarter than us!
- Desire is a very powerful motivation in our lives:
- The heart always makes a convert of the mind.
- The heart is the seat of our desires.
- The heart is our inner man and desire flows out of our inner man.
Proverbs 4:23
Keep your heart with all diligence,
For out of it spring the issues of life.
- Ex. I have known people with PhD’s who sit in my office and tell me they have fallen into adultery and say, “I don’t know how it happened.”
- It happens an inch at a time.
- Slowly the heart makes a convert of the mind.
- And inch by inch your mind makes excuses about all of your needs for her…
- It even ruined Solomon’s life!
Vs. 28
- Nehemiah runs him out! Nehemiah hates sin! Now I’m not advocating his procedures, but get the spirit of his heart.
- Do you catch the spirit of Nehemiah?
Vs. 29-31
- The spirit of Nehemiah is that he sees the destructive nature of sin through compromise, and he is passionate to go after righteousness.
- We have all seen this in our lives…may we catch the spirit of Nehemiah, an unbending commitment to live fully for God.
- Nehemiah is keenly aware that God has a great memory: four times he reminds God: Vs. 14, 22, 29, and 30.
- When you have sinned you need to confess it, homologeo, “saying the same thing.” It means “agreeing with God that I have sinned.” I am agreeing with what your Word says!
- And then God, with His remarkable memory, will allow Himself to forget and forgive…
- God can’t forget, but He can choose not to remember!
Hebrews 8:12
For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more."
- He can blot out your sins forever!
- Remember me!! Remember me!!
This sermon was produced at Mountain Springs Church in Colorado Springs, with Senior Pastor Steve Holt. www.mountainsprings.org
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